Posted on 08/20/2021 7:52:11 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Trump instructed me to arrange a conditions-based, methodical exit plan that would preserve the national interest. The plan ended up being fairly simple: The Afghan government and the Taliban were both told they would face the full force of the US military if they caused any harm to Americans or American interests in Afghanistan.
Next, both parties would negotiate to create an interim-joint government, and both sides had to repudiate al Qaeda. Lastly, a small special-operations force would be stationed in the country to take direct action against any terrorist threats that arose. When all those conditions were met — along with other cascading conditions — then a withdrawal could, and did, begin.
We successfully executed this plan until Jan. 20, 2021. During this interval — when there were no US casualties in Afghanistan — President Ashraf Ghani and the Taliban conducted multiple rounds of negotiations, and al Qaeda was sidelined. The result was a successful drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan to 2,500, the lowest count since the dawn of the War on Terror.
Former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller claimed that the Trump administration never intended to completely pull of out Afghanistan. Ex-Trump official Chris Miller says Taliban deal was a ‘play’ never intended to pull troops We handed our entire plan to the incoming Biden administration during the lengthy transition. The new team simply wasn’t interested.
Everything changed when the new commander in chief declared that US forces would leave Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, pushing back the Trump administration’s timetable by four months. Crucially, he didn’t condition the withdrawal on continued adherence to the agreed-upon stipulations. It would be an unconditional pullout with an arbitrary date based on pure symbolism — and set in stone.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
And as I pointed out to the earlier person who mentioned that, the agreement Pompeo signed with the Taliban requires that all troops be withdrawn. Not all troops except for a 'small contingent of special forces' but each and every one.
There's a link to the text of the agreement in my reply 34.
Who do YOU believe ?
Who do YOU believe ?
+++++
I really have no idea. AFAIK, Trump had come to an agreement with the Taliban that he would withdraw almost all of the troops. What I’m curious about is: Was the plan to renege on that agreement? That’s what I read into the.quote from the article.
But that doesn’t sound like Trump. He makes deals that are favorable to himself.
In one case you have to ask yourself what the Taliban would do if Trump did not bring home the troops. (Unpredictable to my mind but very likely to end the agreement.) Then what would Trump have done.
And if there was no plan to stay then we would have had a more rational exit but the long term result would be Taliban rule.
It is hard for me to believe that Trump would expect his Taliban Agreement to actually work. Somehow we are missing something here.
Agree. Conventional troops are not trained in UW.
Biden’s afraid of bad press... so are the cowards at the Pentagon and State Department.
When all the other countries get their people out - getting OUR people out will be harder.
Our people will stand out and none of our former allies are going to come back to help. Why should they? We screwed them over too.
Interesting...
Doesn't he? I think he does if he wants to be President again in 2025, and he's certainly dropping a lot of hints that he plans to run.
Ping.
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says
Trump can do in 4 months what Dementia Joe and his cabal would take 40 lifetimes.
You don't understand. There is a class of people on here who want others not only to do their research for them, but feel entitled to have others explain it to them point for point. (rolls eyes) Then they will argue and denounce you.
Is that true? Do we really know
Link to the Chris Miller article at post 69.
So Trump had no intention of carrying out his agreement with the Taliban negotiated by Pence? How could that not help but end well?
Lol.
You seem like a rather superficial (black’n’white) thinker; but this is a complex situation with many moving parts. Trump is a shades-of-meaning negotiator, and he was well aware that they would soon violate the agreement, in which case he could renegotiate the terms, or justify a massive bombardment. A lot depended on whether he would have received a mandate, which he did, discounting the election fraud.
Apparently people seem to believe that Trump's plan was to beat the Taliban to the punch, violate the agreement first, and continue to leave U.S. troops in Afghanistan. I find that hard to believe. He was too set against continuing the war there.
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That’s not at all apparent.
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